Did Obama Administration Reject Chinese Defector to Please Beijing?

The State Department held a classified briefing for members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on April 26 regarding the administration’s handling of the reported attempt in February by a high level Chinese official to defect to the United States. As reported here previously, Wang Lijun, the famous “crime fighter” and chief of police for Chonqing City (where he was also vice mayor) made a dramatic, secret visit to the United States Consulate General in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, provoking a major armed standoff between police and military forces representing Chonqing, who had been sent to capture him, and forces from Sichuan, who were ordered to take Wang into custody and stop the Chonqing police from arresting him.

The State Department held a classified briefing for members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on April 26 regarding the administration’s handling of the reported attempt in February by a high level Chinese official to defect to the United States. As reported here previously, Wang Lijun, the famous “crime fighter” and chief of police for Chonqing City (where he was also vice mayor) made a dramatic, secret visit to the United States Consulate General in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, provoking a major armed standoff between police and military forces representing Chonqing, who had been sent to capture him, and forces from Sichuan, who were ordered to take Wang into custody and stop the Chonqing police from arresting him.

“Committee Members received information this morning in a classified setting” about the Wang Lijun incident, Bradley R. Goehner, Communications Director of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs wrote in an email to The Epoch Times in response to a question. “No more information was provided," the Times reported.

Foreign affairs watchers and China analysts have suggested that the Obama administration may have refused to grant asylum to Wang Lijun in order not to cause any ripples in U.S.-Sino relations before the impending White House visit of China’s Vice-President Xi Jinping.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, on February 15 issued a statement critical of the administration’s handling of the Wang Lijun affair and requesting information about the incident. She said,

As the potential next leader of China visits the U.S. this week, I am disappointed about reports that the U.S. turned away Wang Lijun, a high-ranking Chinese official seeking asylum. This decision appears to have been made to avoid "embarrassing" China on the eve of Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States. I have requested all available information from the State Department regarding Mr. Wang’s request for asylum, as well as the status of his condition and his current whereabouts.

Wang’s flight to the U.S. Consulate and the confrontation it precipitated between the provincial jurisdictions is credited with providing the ammunition used to oust Bo Xilai from the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Wang’s current whereabouts are a matter of speculation, but human rights groups continue to charge that he was at the center of an organ-harvesting operation that butchered prisoners, including Falun Gong religious practitioners.

New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV), a global media organization founded by Chinese Americans and based in New York City, reported on April 26 that Wang Lijun has been a prime suspect in China’s notorious organ-transplant business.

According to the NTDTV report:

The future of the former Chinese police chief of Chongqing, Wang Lijun, is up in the air since he tried to defect to a US consulate in February. Of late, he has been scrutinized for the organ-transplant research center he founded in Jingzhou, in Liaoning Province.

Rights group the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, or WOIPFG, alleges that Wang is implicated in the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. It’s a procedure whereby organs from prisoners are taken and sold for profit for transplant surgery.

According to two Canadian investigators, communist authorities are accused of taking the organs mostly from prisoners of conscience who are killed in the process. Between May 2003 and June 2008, Wang Lijun was the party secretary and chief of Jinzhou City’s Public Security Bureau. There he founded the On-Site Psychology Research Center of the Public Security Bureau of Jinzhou. The center carries out research on drugs for improving the process of human organ transplants.

Wang is a policeman by training and his official resume does not contain any background information in the medical field. In 2006, two years after founding the facility, Wang received an award for “outstanding achievement” in innovation for his work. State-run media reported that during his acceptance speech, Wang said, "The so-called 'on-site research' is the result of several thousand intensive on-site cases”—in other words, thousands of transplants have taken place there in two years.

The Epoch Times has reported that Wang delivered a large batch of documents to the U.S. Consulate and has suggested that the documents may provide evidence incriminating many top Chinese officials in the gruesome organ-harvesting trade.

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